Services offered by the departments of immigration and civil status on Praslin are now available under one roof at the island’s new customer service centre, located at the Pension Fund Complex at Grand Anse.

This comes after the immigration office, which was previously based at the Baie Ste Anne community centre, closed its doors a few weeks ago and shifted all of its operations to join the civil status office at the customer service centre at Grand Anse.

Birth and death registrations, civil weddings and other civil status related services can now be accessed alongside immigration services such as passport applications and renewals, visitors’ permits, dependent permits, student permits as well as gainful occupation permits.

According to the officer in charge of the customer service centre, Marie-Liza Lesperance, the centre had planned to introduce the production of identity cards by the end of March this year but this new service has been delayed due to the pandemic.

Following President Danny Faure’s announcements in relation to increases in certain categories of the gainful occupation permit, financial contribution of foreign workers to the local pension scheme, among others, employment minister and her team have given more details on the declarations.

This was during a meeting with the media on Tuesday afternoon.

Representatives and officials from member states of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), under the United Nations (UN) Migration Agency, are attending a three-day consultative meeting on the establishment of a Migration Dialogue for Indian Ocean Commission countries (MiDIOCC), at the Eden Bleu Hotel.

The meeting was officially launched yesterday morning by Vice-President of the Republic of Seychelles and current chair of the IOC, Vincent Meriton, who remarked that the people from Indian Ocean states were themselves migrants from Africa, India, China, Europe and the Middle East noting the numerous diverse reasons for migration including “to aspire to a better life, to gain access to employment or quality education for children as well as to overcome strained political and social contexts, escape the risk of epidemic among other reasons.